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Sony: New Share Feature Can Be Limited By Developers

The Share button on Sony's new Dual Shock 4 controller is a slick new feature that lets players upload videos and screenshots to social networking sites.

However, as you might've expected, there will be some limitations to this feature. In speaking to 4Gamer (as cited by Edge), Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida confirmed that developers will have the option to restrict the footage they want the player to "Share."

"There will be parts of a game that the maker does not want people to be able to see. For example, on Vita, developers can in certain scenes disable the feature that lets users take a screenshot, and (the Share function) will have a similar mechanism. The creator may not want to make video of the final boss sharable, for instance."

Therefore, if the developer doesn't want someone spoiling the hell out of a game, they may not allow you to capture the ending scene, or something like that. There may be other reasons for a designer not to allow the gamer to share a certain part of the game, which makes sense. Personally, I have never felt the compulsion to "share" any scene with anyone but that's probably only because I really despise social media. I bet other people like this feature, though. :)

Me and my friends play lots of co-op games, and we have had countless moments of just pure, timeless fun.

There have been many times where something happened that wasn't supposed to, or something didn't happen that was supposed to, or even just a random situation with a resulting comment that turned itself into a side-splittingly funny scene.

While I can understand being able to limit the function, it also seems to somewhat defeat the purpose. If I can't share what *I* want to share, then what's the point?

People can/will get around the limitations by uploading footage to Youtube like they have for years now, anyway, so I'm not sure if this will actually do anything.

If such limitations are implemented, I hope developers will at least include the option to remove the limitations at a later date (say, two months after release), after which presumably they won't care about "spoilers" or whatever and players can share whatever they want.

It's not a big deal to me, but this is almost pointless. There are already many, many people with capture cards that are able to record whatever they want anyway. As for the people that don't want spoilers, then they can simply choose not to watch it. Freedom of choice.

On the good side, this only states the possibility, not mandatory or anything. For all we know, not many developers may implement such restrictions.